All Things Open 2014 - Day 2 Thursday, October 23rd, 2014 Michael DeHaan CTO with Ansible Greg DeKoenigsberg VP Community with Eucalyptus Systems DevOps Ansible - 1,000,000 Downloads and Counting Find more by Greg here: http://www.slideshare.net/gregdekoenigsberg

1. BuildingaCommunityin an Accelerated World
MichaelDeHaan and GregDeKoenigsberg

2. BONA FIDES
Who are these guys, anyway?

3. ABOUT GREG
Fedora, OLPC, Eucalyptus
Once upon atime, I read apaper
Modularityand Option Value

4. ABOUT MICHAEL
Lots of systems managementtech
Cobbler, Func
Startups

5. WHAT IS ANSIBLE?
Configmgmt, App deployment, Cloud, Orchestration
justmanages machines over SSH
expresses configuration and processes in YAML
based on Python, butsupports other languages

6. LINUX REACHED 100+ CONTRIBUTORS A MONTH IN YEAR 11
1 contributor (Linus Torvalds), August1991
102 contributors, March 2002
https://www.openhub.net/p/linux

7. ANSIBLE REACHED 100+ CONTRIBUTORS A MONTH IN YEAR 2
1 contributor (MichaelDeHaan), February2012
115 contributors, March 2014
https://www.openhub.net/p/ansible-ssh

8. WHAT'S CHANGED?
And how do you manage an open source projectin this new
world?

9. KEYS TO OUR SUCCESS
1. We overcommunicate
2. We use Github wisely
3. We design for firstexperience
4. We design for modularity
5. We gather the rightdatafor decisions

10. 1. OVERCOMMUNICATE

11. EMAIL FOR LONG-FORM DISCUSSIONS
When someone bothers to ask aquestion...
any question...
they've invested time in your project.
Answer them.

12. IRC FOR REAL-TIME DISCUSSIONS
When people need help now, be present.
This takes commitmentuntilyou have acommunityof users.
Almost50%of our time in earlystages of the project
Do allow your communityto become self-sufficient.

13. TWITTER FOR BUZZ
Chatter and banter are great,
butproblems can'tbe solved in 140 characters.
Drive discussions to the mailinglist.
Review Twitter daily.

14. DON'T TAKE CRITICISM PERSONALLY
Respond to whatrequires aresponse.
Don'tfeed the trolls.
Don'tdo drama, and don'tbe afraid to ban problem users.

15. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
900 users on IRC
3500 ansible-project
8000+ stars on GitHub
2500+ forks, 38%turn into contributions

16. REMEMBER: QUIET PROJECTS ARE FAILED PROJECTS.

17. 2. USE GITHUB WISELY

18. THE OLD WAYS ARE GONE
Six million users are on Github.
Other issue trackers and code systems require differentlogins.
Theyalluse the same tools.
Theyallhave the same expectations.
And theycontribute waymore freely.

19. USE THE ISSUE TRACKER
The ticketsystem is flexible (and kind of horrible). Use it.
Prioritize issues quickly.
Ask for more information.
Template your responses.
Enlistbots if needed

20. DO NOT MERGE EVERY SINGLE REQUEST
You are the upstream.
You are responsible for quality.
Review patches even if ittakes time.
Mentor contributors where possible.
Take the time to figure outyour trusted contributors.

21. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
Success is havingtoo much work
Severaldozens of new pullrequests, tickets, and emails aday
~900 people on IRC!
Hundreds of tweets in Japanese you don'tunderstand :)

22. 3. DESIGN FOR FIRST EXPERIENCE

23. CAN'T INSTALL SIMPLY IN 15 MINUTES?
Keep workingon it.

24. CAN'T GET A WORKING EXAMPLE UP IN A LUNCH HOUR?
Keep working.

25. DOCUMENTATION CONFUSES PEOPLE?
Keep workingon it.

26. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
Happyusers
Users startingmeetups
...

27. 4. MODULARITY IS CRITICAL

28. HUGE SCALE IS A FUNCTION OF ARCHITECTURE

29. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
240+ modules in core
Users/customers join developmentcommunity(Gawker, Zynga,
etc)
Vendors steppingup to help (Google, Rackspace, etc)

30. 5. GATHER THE RIGHT DATA FOR DECISIONS

31. PAY ATTENTION TO WEB TRAFFIC
Our docs site is awesome for this

32. WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK
SurveyMonkeyis free and worth it
Gotaquestion?Ask!

33. Finally...
DON'T BE AFRAID TO DO SOMETHING THAT'S "BEEN DONE"

34. ISN'T CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT KINDA DONE?
Nope. Noteven close.
(also, it's notallconfigmanagement)

35. TAKING ON THE INCUMBENT
Bythe numbers

36. CONTRIBUTORS
The people who help build the software
Puppet: 41 per year of life (8 years, 329 contributors)
Ansible: 450 per year of life (2 years, 899 contributors)

37. FORKS
The people who mighthelp build the software in the future
Puppet: 147 per year of life (8 years, 1181 forks)
Ansible: 1253 per year of life (2 years, 2507 forks)

38. STARS
The people who rate the software highly
Puppet: 330 stars per year of life (8 years, 2653 stars)
Ansible: 4033 stars per year of life (2 years, 8066 stars)

39. A GOOD IDEA IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

40. THANKS
Michael: @laserllama
Greg: @gregdek
Questions?